AUSTIN, Texas, July 27, 2005 — Sometimes it's hard to tell which is which. I got up with every intention of going to the gym. I was dressed in gym clothes. But when a friend said she wanted to have lunch I said sure I could do that. I could brush down my bed head and put on jeans and a polo and have some Chinese. I'd been sitting at my desk, pulling together pictures of the Carol Channing thing in various forms for emailing, sending in for printing in the newspaper, uploading to Snapfish. I'd been trying to proof my journal, filling in stuff and putting the finishing touches on it to publish. I can't imagine anyone is patient enough to still be looking for the thing, but one reader actually

reads it. That's the Internet age: one reader matched with one writer. I suppose it was the same in the age of letter writing with quill pen.

In any case, until lunch I'm occupied in the questionable pursuit of picture pixels and words associated with the dates fleeing behind me on the calendar.

I have a good lunch with my friend. We discuss travel. I'm thinking, but don't say, how I've realized that travel is work. Compared to my usual work of exercising, watching movies, writing journal entries, socializing. Ha. I'm having to 'rest up' from my trip. When I worked, though, trips energized my brain, got me out of a rut. Still love to travel. Feel compelled to be gone from Austin more weeks than I got vacation and holidays when I worked just to prove I'm retired. Still. Work.

When I get back from the lunch, I decide that I really should catch up on the family budget. I also apply for a $30 gas rebate for booking through hotels.com. There are all sorts of opportunities out there to get bargains and rebates. I don't usually take advantage of them. I should. Working on the family budget makes me realize that we probably need to find places to cut corners. If only so we will have more money to give away. When we travel, I charge all the gas for the car and meals out (which usually have their own category) to travel. This is interesting. It cost us about $330 in gas to go about 5000 miles. Oh, and we had to have an oil change, etc. when we got home. Plus the other wear and tear I suppose. In a normal month, the family spends about $100 on gas (and car washes). It has been running on the high side with gas prices. Anyway. I get the family budget all worked over and up to this point in July. (I use special workbook of spreadsheets I devised, not a program like Money or Quicken. I create a set for every month.) FFP does a lot of the investment management, deposits, paying bills. I do the budget from receipts we save and by reviewing the checkbooks and the credit card accounts.

I feel some satisfaction when the budget is caught up. I suppose it gives me some measure of a feeling of control. At the end of last year, I reveiwed all our investments and thought I had a handle on that, too, until tax time came and I devoted time to getting that done. After that I never seemed to have the time to get back to it due to one thing and another. Forrest and the bookkeeper keep things filed and going but we have the 'another pair of eyes' theory. Plus I do the taxes so I don't want to wait too long to determine what capital gains and losses we have and such. When we had very little money, we sweated the next paycheck to pay the bills but you could 'manage' your money on a napkin. Now that we have a little more, management is a chore. Some people turn every bit of it over to others. Perhaps if I had more than chump change I would do that. Probably not, though. You can turn over so many things in your life until you feel that you aren't actually present in your own life. Heck, maybe that's why I do the journal. Otherwise, my life is a soon-forgotten movie with a poor plot and wooden acting instead of something I own.

And speaking of movies. I was going to the gym. Really. But after the budget and such chores (I filed away a few things from the trip) I decided to screen a few movies for AFF. What are the odds that I would have pulled two movies from the bins about the same rather strange topic? I couldn't believe it. Anyway, time got away with me. FFP made chicken taco salad and I ate it. I read some of the old newspapers and tried puzzles in some of them. And soon it was late. FFP seemed out of sorts. The laundry had messed up one of his shirts trying to get a spot out. His 'favorite' he said. Even getting two new shirts on sale hadn't assuaged him. First he seemed to want to go to bed early and then he got a second wind and wandered off to work on something. My back felt stiff (soreness from returning to my weight work in the gym yesterday and the days before I think) and my stomach was a little upset. I went to bed and slept fitfully, haunted by aches, a vague feeling of being lost and some bad movies and some disturbing movies and some that were both. Tomorrow will be a better day. I think anyway. At least I accomplished something. Didn't I?